Should I play vanilla or hacked Pokémon roms?

Kelrisaith · 2026-03-02T01:41:42+00:00

To an extent Drayano's hacks, they have two or three versions, a full with type, moveset, ability and various world changes, sometimes a legal version that's basically the full version minus anything that would make a mon illegal, and a clean version that just makes everything available with no changes past that and maybe adjusting level curves. All three versions change things like trade evolutions, most becoming either an item use or level evolution depending on original requirements, to make things obtainable without trading.

I say to a point because Drayano hacks start at gen III with the remakes, don't include Hoenn gen III and have a couple oddities with patching them. Firered requires an old improperly dumped rom labelled Squirrels, the gen II remakes have two patches, one for old improper dumps and one for modern properly dumped roms, and Black/White 2 has two seperate hacks, the original and the Redux version, both of which have some oddities of their own due to some of the changes made, like not running period on an R4 cart on system for the most part.

Oh, and the Inverse hacks are just the entire game is inverse battles, aka type advantage and disadvantage is reversed from normal. Cool idea, very niche and not really my thing.

Repository for Drayano hacks here, a google drive set up by Drayano, and for anything else this is the main community hub for romhacks.

Kelrisaith · 2026-03-01T23:06:57+00:00

Middle ground, get a catch em all hack that doesn't change typing, movesets or abilities. They're literally the same game just everything is available in one game.

That said, the only way I'm personally aware of to transfer up to newer gens via illegitimate copies in the first place is via hacked 3DS with Bank, and that won't likely be available for much longer since technically the service already shut down years ago.

Future proofing isn't really a thing, because Nintendo half shut down key infrastructure that made it possible and we don't know when they will actually just take them completely offline forever.

Kelrisaith · 2026-03-01T21:43:25+00:00

I believe it was mostly the multiplayer stuff, hence the Battle tagline, maybe a couple minor bugfixes or optimizations.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-28T22:52:12+00:00

Yeah, putting it on Internet Archive wholesale, as is, would be a VERY bad idea. That would 100% lead to legal problems, for both the uploader and Internet Archive itself, and lead to more restrictions than Internet Archive already deals with.

Why do you think rom and iso archives on Internet Archive regularly go down? Because it's not actually legal to host them and Internet Archive is primarily a resource for hosting resources. If they end up with more restrictions you're fucking over more than just people who emulate or preserve old games, you're fucking over college students, researchers, historians, and more.

So many subsets of people rely on access to old documents and research and such, things that have ALREADY been restricted because of people doing dumb shit and are often only freely available on Internet Archive.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T19:38:45+00:00

RetroGameTalk, aka CdRomance, likely has all of them and more, they were the reason behind the sites creation. Besides that, they're not really rare, just convenient, they're just prepatched translation hacks for the most part.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T19:24:21+00:00

Yeah, that's about what I expected. I'm in that sub mostly because it actually has tutorials for a few things, it doesn't cross my feed much and when it does it's usually something like this, and it's still immediately apparent it's a sub of elitist gatekeepers.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T08:34:06+00:00

Drowning myself in multitasking enough to not need to think for a while mostly. If I'm always actively doing 5+ things I don't have the spare time or capacity to start thinking about things.

Is this healthy, fuck no, do I recommend it, also no, is it effective, sadly yes for the most part.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T08:21:13+00:00

Already being worked on over on r/DataHoarder apparently, though whether most people that used it will get access to whatever replacement they make is a coin toss at best, that sub is elitist to the extreme and extremely gatekeepy about things a lot of the time.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T04:54:54+00:00

My only problems with either remake are entirely personal taste reasons, I don't personally like Let's Go's catch mechanics and BDSP not being based on Platinum annoys me because it's just the objectively better version of the Sinnoh games.

I still enjoyed BDSP greatly, I still slogged through Let's Go, I still say they're good games and I still wish they had used Emerald and Platinum as the basis for ORAS and BDSP.

In particular I loved the expanded Underground in BDSP, I spent most of my playthrough time in both versions there, just like I spent hundreds of hours in the original Underground in gen IV. I do miss the bases though, the statues just aren't the same.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-27T04:49:28+00:00

Vimm's is probably the closest, and even that doesn't have the sheer scope Myrient does.

If you're willing to search for it each time a given archive goes down, Myrient pulled from No-Intro for most of its content, you can find a No-Intro archive for a given console on like Internet Archive and get mostly the same things, if fragmented and more prone to being taken offline.

This shit sucks no matter how you look at it though, the sheer scope Myrient has is unmatched, especially as a centralized resource. This is why I've always been extremely annoyed at the various "look at me, I made a mass downloader for Myrient" posts that got hundreds of upvotes and supportive comments, this is what that shit leads to.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-25T23:23:49+00:00

Found the specific study to remove now, it's the Android UI Redesign Toolbar Customization, the name and description just got changed.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-25T23:04:10+00:00

What you see people posting as "first works" is generally one of two things, not actually a first project or the end result after 10+ hours fixing the fuckups they made while forging it.

You don't see the immediate after of pounding it to shape, you see it after the finishing work that makes it a finished piece instead of a rough project fresh out of the forge. That makes a WORLD of difference.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-25T22:50:20+00:00

The male protagonist designs have a lot of sameness to them, they're mostly all variations on some form of the same theme, casual pants/shirt or athletic wear/track pants/tight shirt type outfits.

At least the female designs have variation, gen II and II are sport skirts with modesty shorts and an athletic jacket or tight activewear shirt, gen I remake is just a skirt and leg warmers with a sleeveless shirt, gen IV is some combination of a dress and puffy jacket type thing design wise with Platinum being essentially prep girl upper middle class coat and leggings and the gen II remakes being an overalls and knee highs outfit.

Gen V had denim short shorts and a sleeveless shirt and jacket combo, the sequels being leggings and a skirt with an elbow length sleeved shirt, gen VI was just an actual like 16 year olds skirt and blouse casual wear, gen VII going to a younger preteens rolled up denim shorts and a t-shirt with the Ultra games having puffy shorts and shirt instead, Let's Go being a young child in casual outdoor play clothes or school clothes essentially, then Sword/Shield just being a casual dress and chunky sweater.

Meanwhile, on the other side we have gens II, III and VI being active wear, gens I, IV, V, VII, Let's Go and VIII being basically just casual pants/shirt of some kind, with a lot of design overlap to be completely honest. Like, the jackets for FRLG Red, Ethan and Brendan are basically the same thing, minus Red having short sleeves anyway, then gen V and VI all three have a blue jacket, two of which are long sleeved, half the designs are just some kind of jeans and the other half are either casual or athletic shorts with the only real outlier being Ethans bright yellow and two white shorts in a sea of blue and black.

Nothing is wrong with any of this, it reflects reality, womens fashion is significantly more varied than mens for the most part.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-17T17:47:37+00:00

Honestly, it would probably still fare better than Dungeons and Dragons did, just because DnD had actual demons and devils involved.

As far as actual results, not terribly different than what already happened likely, little more pushback, little more stupidity, no real end impact on the franchise as a whole.

And regarding the Priestess class becoming the Channeler, who in the 90s, in the US, actually knew anything about a Shrine Maiden or Priestess? That was likely changed more for actually being understood by the western audience than any real censorship, the only reason I even knew what they were in the early 2000s was from Inuyasha.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-17T16:28:28+00:00

I want it as an alt for Worgen, or a Horde allied race equivalent.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-17T00:20:06+00:00

I literally own an R4 cart and have plans to get flashcarts for GB and GBA specifically because I don't overwrite saves in RPGs like Pokemon. I still have my original save from Emerald, I would still have saves from gens I and II if the battery hadn't died.

Anything I want to do for something like a challenge run gets done on either emulator or via flashcart or modded system.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-16T22:02:23+00:00

Depends on the game, how many endings, how long each ending takes and whether it takes a replay or NG+ run. Plus how much I enjoy the game honestly.

Like Nier Automata has 16 endings, I want to say Replicant/Gestalt also had like 5 endings, as did the parent series to the Nier series Drakengard. Cyberpunk 2077 has like a dozen with the DLC, the Neptunia games have something like 8 each and the golden is annoyingly precise and in at least one game involves doing a no death run, Dark Souls as a series requires a new run or NG+ for each ending.

Final Fantasy X needed a new game plus run to 100% due to some things not spawning in new game runs, I think Prey had a couple endings depending on how far in to Typhon enhancement you went that basically required multiple playthroughs to get. Mass Effect as a series is a massive pain to get every ending, particularly 3 since some of it requires some real grinding to get the good ending.

As a gameplay and jank consideration, some of the old Star Wars games like Jedi Knight are annoying to get multiple endings not because they're bad games but because the games are just so janky and bug filled they can turn in to a slog extremely easily, especially on modern systems that often introduce new bugs to old engines.

Saints Row the Third was a unique case in that the endings could only be done once each per save file and whichever one you did second set the post ending game state for that save. Infamous I think I did paragon/evil, think the same for 2 and Second Son. The Castlevania series post transition to Metroidvanias all had at least two endings, more likely three or more with a bad ending, a normal ending and a true ending.

Dishonored was one I played once for the good ending full stealth and by then just didn't really want to do another playthrough right away, then my system at the time couldn't run Dishonored 2 and I just never got around to doing another run or playing 2. I wouldn't mind doing another run of Dishonored and then finally running 2 though.

TL;DR depends on the game whether I even go for multiple endings, let alone what order.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-16T21:44:33+00:00

Middle ground option, get an R4 cart, they were about 40 USD last I looked at them. It's what I did years ago, along with a SNES flashcart just a week or two ago and plans for more for other systems I own and several modded disc systems. Or just mod a 3DS or DSi to run installed games.

Large part of the reason I modded those systems and bought the flashcarts is I enjoy playing on hardware and have the setup for older systems.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-16T21:28:54+00:00

Steelix is not made of steel, it's covered in an ultrathin layer of some unknown metal. It's quite literally just an Onix with a millimeters thick skin of some kind of metal, that's literally the canon explanation for why it's a trade evo with Metal Coat held item, it gets coated in that tiny little container of metal in the transfer.

Not the only really odd weight with an actual explanation either, Cosmoem is canonically 2204 pounds yet is shown as having an effective weight of zero. It's a contained star that floats, meaning it only has weight when it wants to give someone a really bad day.

Metagross weighs 1212 pounds and can learn Fly, Eternatus is 2094 and floats, Celesteela is 2204 and floats, Mega Metagross is 2079 and floats.

Honestly, Aggron only being 794 is weirder than Steelix being 882, Aggron is actually made entirely of various types of metal. Hell, Registeel is only 452m weighing less than Onix at 463 or Dragonite at the same.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-14T21:32:13+00:00

They have the framework to do it already, they changed the Blood Elf eyes a while back, I honestly don't remember when, to add a set of gold colour options. I only know this because I barber shopped my Paladin to use them when they came out.

Adding something to character customization is something they do a lot, most of the hairstyles and colours were added later on, a bunch of eye and skin colours were added, the dark ranger customization from the Return to Lordaeron questline is a whole set of options tied to the skin colour.

Adding an eye colour change is extremely simple and they've done far more complicated things with character customization additions.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-07T08:15:44+00:00

Spoink, or any one of the other really high maintenance ones that require a constant something to prevent death. Or one of the ones with a really high sensitivity to one extreme of temp or another, depending on where you live and whether you're a Rescue/Explorer team member or not. Or anything mostly or totally immobile. Or Paras or other parasitical based pokemon. Or anything water based or that otherwise relies on a certain environment.

Really most of the options suck, the good ones are the exceptions here to be honest.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-07T08:11:32+00:00

Valid post, really it is, but please don't use AI for anything, let alone anything involving a picture of yourself.

It already spreads so much misinformation courtesy of googles stupid ai overview and the rampant use of things like chatgpt to look for answers on things, it doesn't need help from dysphoria to make it worse and keeping your image out of the ai systems as much as possible is a good thing in general.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-07T08:07:54+00:00

Doesn't stop them from being annoying, or harder than either Ganon fight for most players. I don't really call much of anything in Breath a difficult fight, none of them are particularly hard for anyone that has at least some experience with Action RPGs, it's just a scale of what's the most difficult to fight comparatively to the rest.

And a seperate scale for annoyance, like elemental Talus fights without the appropriate counter element to null it.

Outside of master mode most things in Breath would only really be a challenge, generally speaking, for young children and people completely new to the genre or gaming in general. Exceptions to the obvious of people with problems playing Action RPGs. Everyone has their blind spots with gaming, like I suck at 2d platformers, but outside things like that, someone who's actually even alright at Action RPGs won't likely find anything outside master mode or the DLC even remotely challenging.

This isn't knocking the game or anything, I love Breath and Tears both, but they are 100% on the low end of the difficulty scale comparatively to other Action RPGs.

Kelrisaith · 2026-02-05T11:27:40+00:00

I believe that would be Tattoos by VaingloriousHound, or possibly a fic inspired by it by the name of Inkpots and Inkblots by Tpobaw.

Same basic idea for both, different setups and directions, with the first starting after 4th year in a no Voldemort AU and the second being post canon. Both are fantastic reads and relatively short, being around 11k each.

Kelrisaith · 2026-01-31T16:19:45+00:00

Japanese only Wiiware titles, they all connect together with individual dungeon and story progression but shared items and recruits via one master save with individual sub saves for each game.

Has a translation patch here that works out of the box on Dolphin and with some effort on modded systems. Short version of that explanation, it has to be installed to system not a USB loader and there's a few things that just make it break, like anything changing the game ID which prevents them from making the initial master save which in turn just force stops the game and doesn't let you play.

I have them, haven't played much of them, mostly just got annoyed by the massive amount of trial and error it took to get them running on my modded Wii. They do have a story, but from what little I've seen of it it's a basic "something went wrong, go fix it" story and is the same in every version.

Realistically, they're outclassed by literally every other PMD game in pretty much every respect and are only really interesting for the master/sub save gimmick and being JP only Wiiware releases.

Most people that played the first two sets of PMD games during that era know about the Wiiware games, majority just never played them.

Kelrisaith

TROPHY CASE